The State Department has chastised Venezuela's Hugo Chavez for his "reprehensible"
allegation that the United States could be giving cancer to Latin American
leaders.

Without providing any evidence to back up his claim, Chavez posed the rhetorical question "Would it be that strange if they had developed technology to induce cancer without anyone knowing about it?" at a ceremony for the national armed forces on Wednesday.

His comments prompted condemnation from State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

"With regard to the Chavez statements, let me simply say that they are horrific and reprehensible," she told reporters.

Chavez made the allegations against his arch-foe in a speech in which he expressed "solidarity" Argentina's leader Cristina Kirchner, whose office announced this week she had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

Even "with the law of probabilities, what has been happening to some of us in Latin America... it's strange, very strange," said Chavez, who has himself waged a successful battle against cancer.